More footwork

Ride height.

This is something that seem to obsess car guys for some reason.  IMHO all cars that roll out of the factory is too high.  The ride height is set at the factory to accommodate a variety of market demands (road conditions, the need for the car to work well year round and not to allow the tires to rub the bodywork in extreme conditions causing damage to the bodywork).  Very rarely are they set up to allow maximum performance or appearance.  Japanese manufacturers seem the worse, Germans the best and the rest somewhere in between.

The GTR comes from the factory with incredible performance credentials. The CBA lapped the Nurburgring in 7:38 at its debut and has continually dropped lower and lower in subsequent updates to the current insane 7:08 (with the Nismo Edition with the N-attack package).  I can't help but think the times have dropped due to suspension black magic and ride height adjustments.  Ride height drops the centre of gravity, allows the car to hook up better, improves aerodynamic efficiency by controlling undercar turbulence and makes the car look sweet.  

When I bought this car the first major purchase for it was an HKS GT570 kit.  This was from a guy in the maritimes who was a distributor with extra inventory he had picked up when HKS stopped its North American operations.  It was a smoking hot deal, made better by the fact he threw in H&R springs for free.  These springs dropped the car an inch all around for an aggressive slammed look.

Before:

After:

Springs are nice if you just want a drop you can live with and not lose the car's cockpit suspension controls.  I liked the looks but with my aggressive ADV1 wheels which pushed the front tires to the extreme outer edge of the wheel well, I was having a lot of rubbing issues when I went over ANY BUMPS on the road.  It was so bad I started looking into new wheels that had more negative offset to bring the wheels deeper into the well.  I eventually removed a couple of wheel well liner screws in the 10 and 2 o'clock position to stop the rubbing but big dips still sucked.

After 4 months I had enough, bit the bullet an ordered the KW sleeve kit.

It's amazing what the change in spring rate and careful ride height adjustment will do. The car rides comfortably and feel noticeably tighter on turn in than stock and eons better than the H&Rs.  Never looked back and highly recommend this for anyone.  The best part was I am able to get the car corner balanced and dialled in a very useable (and mature) look to the car.

Final results:

Performance done, now to address how she looks!

I love the stock looks of the GTR. it's functional, purposeful, mean.  It's not a pretty car, but weapons are not pretty.

I rarely feel that anything aftermarket could improve upon what designers and engineers have perfected in wind tunnel hours, but when you see what's been done to race cars to improve on the original design, you get ideas.  

After seeing some GT1 and GT3 cars in action, I decided I wanted side skirts with the stepped lip.  I also wanted a conservative front chin spoiler. In comes Stillen.  I'm not a fan of their parts in general but their one big advantage is the fact they do a lot of parts in glorious, flexible, give 'em hell urethane. A couple of calls later and the skirts and lip arrives at my door.

I dropped the parts off at Fiore at S&G Autobody and $300 later they return in perfect oem gray to match the rear valence.

Before:

After:

Interior:  

The worst thing about CBA (early generation cars) is the ugly rubber trim around the switchgear and center hvac controls.  My good friend Daryl at RightDrive parts is also the exclusive Canadian dealer for RSW carbon parts from Japan (www.carbonart.ca).  He set me up with the perfectly form fitting pieces that fit like oem.  I like these over what's offered on EBay due to the fact the cut outs for the buttons on the centre console are so precisely done you have holes for each individual rectangular button.  To me, that's a sign of craftsmanship.

More power: SBD700 kit by Speed By Design (OKC)

I was so impressed with the customer service and pricing by Chris Riggs when I bought my catted midpipe that I went back to the well again in my quest to release as many ponies as I can from the stock turbos.

My priorities for this project is: 

1. Keep everything safe.

2. Keep everything easily reversible.

3. Allow me to optimize what remaining performance has been destined from the factory.

4. Keep the car's personality of the "gentleman' sports car" and not make it overly loud, smelly or spew fireballs on the highway.

For my goals there are many kits out there: HKS GT570, Switzer P600, AMS Alpha 6, etc.  Most if not all of them are basically rehashes of the same idea...opening flow from intakes into engine, more rapid expelling of spent gases and a tune to optimize everything passing through.  All of them involve some intake in some diameter, a midpipe with cats deleted and more noise.

Chris supplied me with the remaining portions of the SBD700 kit which consists of:

-decatted cast downpipes (piping from the exhaust manifold back)

-3" GotBoost intakes

-SIR 1000cc injectors

-Walbro 290 LPH drop in fuel pumps (for E85)

...and for no other reason than for my own personal satisfaction I installed a pair of GFB adjustable BOVs to help me announce my presence on the road ;)

All were installed with the help of Lee and Derek at Autovation in a day, and then the fun began with Ben Linney at GTC in the UK who did the custom tune.

Having never built a car like this before, the tuning process was very interesting and fun (though probably not so much for my neighbours on Second Line Rd).  With the Cobb AP, you are able to do live datalogging which allows you to record engine parameters on the fly, map it to a data grid and email the results to Ben who is one ocean and several time zones away.  

After a few days of this he came up with my final tune: 1-valet/Eco mode, 2-low boost 91 octane, 3-high boost 91 octane and 4-high boost 94 octane.  In the final map, I'm putting down 620 at the crank and if I choose to run E85 will achieve the holy number of 700.  I have no intention of using E85 since it's a pita to get in my city, so I'm very pleased with my results.  Car runs like a dream with a more aggressive growl.